The present invention relates generally to anti-theft systems and more particularly, to an object monitoring system and method wherein the location of an object to be protected is substantially continuously transmitted to a remote dispatch center upon the object being moved beyond a selected range. While the present invention is generally applicable for anti-theft protection of any object, it is particularly applicable to anti-theft protection of motor vehicles for which it will first be applied and, accordingly, it will be described with reference to this application herein.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation estimates that a vehicle is stolen every 20 seconds in the United States. Fewer than one in five of these vehicles are recovered. Faced with this high crime rate, vehicle owners, insurance companies, law enforcement agencies and the like are continually searching for improved vehicle alarm and recovery systems which deter would-be thieves or, after the vehicle has been stolen, facilitate locating the stolen vehicle.
One commercial vehicle tracking and security system is marketed by the LoJack Corporation of Dedham, Mass. The LoJack device or transmitter is hidden in a recess in a vehicle. After the vehicle has been reported stolen, the LoJack device is activated by a law enforcement transmitter. Thereafter, the LoJack device emits signals representative of the vehicle's location. Law enforcement officials are then able to follow the signals emitted by the LoJack transmitter to the stolen vehicle.
In such prior systems, problems arise when the vehicle is to be left unattended for an extended period of time. For example, the vehicle may be parked at an airport parking area for weeks. If the vehicle is stolen, the owner of the vehicle may not know and report the theft for days or even weeks. Thus, the thief would have the vehicle for a relatively long period of time before the law enforcement officials attempt to activate the LoJack transmitter. By this time, the vehicle may be out of range of the area served or completely stripped such that its recovery is rather hollow. To alleviate this problem, vehicle alarm systems should automatically sense theft and notify the proper authorities.
One such vehicle tracking and security system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,223,844 issued to Mansell et al. The Mansell et al. system comprises a mobile unit installed in a vehicle which unit is activated by a conventional in-vehicle alarm, such as proximity or intrusion sensors, or by a vehicle occupant. The mobile unit includes a transmitter and a position detector, such as a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver for detecting the position of the vehicle. When an event occurs which activates the in-vehicle alarm, or the system is activated by a vehicle occupant, the mobile unit in the vehicle transmits a signal to a control center. This signal includes encoded information which specifies the type of event and the present position of the vehicle. Thereafter, the mobile unit continually transmits the vehicle position to the control center. Based on the transmitted information, the control center takes appropriate action, such as dispatching law enforcement or emergency personnel.
Since the Mansell et al. system employs a conventional in-vehicle alarm to activate the mobile unit, it is susceptible to inadvertent activation. This problem may be exacerbated in certain situations, such as parking in a valet parking garage. in the valet parking garage, a parking attendant typically parks the vehicle and retains possession of the vehicle keys so that the vehicle may be later moved to accommodate other vehicles. In a worse case, the attendant may forget, or be unable, to activate the security system after parking the vehicle.
If the attendant does properly activate the security system, the attendant may forget to deactivate the in-vehicle alarm before moving the vehicle and inadvertently trigger the alarm. Due to the wide variety of vehicle alarms, the parking attendant may also have difficulty disarming the alarm.
Accordingly, there is a need for a vehicle monitoring system and method for a vehicle which is automatically activated upon movement of the vehicle beyond a predefined range, which preferably permits the predefined range to be variably selected by the vehicle operator, and which, once activated, generates and transmits signals representative of the location of the stolen vehicle.